AH Challenge: "Loose" Sexual "Morals"

Well here is a question for you: Who decides what is exactly is backwards and what exactly is "moral"? What makes Europe's way of doing things any better than Americas? Obviously a lot of Americans like it's conservative culture, so what right does Europe have to call the United States backwards?

There are a lot of conservatives in America who think that homosexuality is wrong and should be illegal. Now, without getting too political, that's morally repugnant to me (cannot be overstated enough). Homosexuality hurts no one.

That's just one example of how American culture can be 'backwards' and conservative at the same time; outlawing victimless crimes. Now, you can still be conservative and think that gay sex is wrong in Europe; but the difference is, the government lets its citizens express themselves how they choose. Another example would be cannabis; why is it socially acceptable for college students (assuming they're at least 21; and even if they're underage, the penalties for underage drinking are much lighter than those for marijuana possession) to get incredibly drunk on a regular basis, but if they start smoking weed then it becomes a crime? Is anyone honestly hurt if people choose a drug that, on the whole, is much less harmful than alcohol?

Again, conservatives can still abstain from smoking cannabis. But for the people who want to, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to.

As for the loose sexual morals, just give it a few more years and the whole U.S. will be like the West Coast is now. Hopefully people will get over abstinence only education quickly, once they realize how ineffective it is.
 
As aforementioned, the title sounds more like a DBWI and reflects the Amercian origin of the asking person. If sexual mores in Ireland and Poland shall really be more rigid than elsewhere just because abortion is illegal is questionable, though doubtable surveys of popular scientific value quoted in various lifestyle magazines do indeed repeatedly report about the lesser promiscuity of the average Pole compared to e.g. the average German. But people normally have access to normal contraception and normally choose their spouses by themselves, so I don't think you will find an intense difference among Westerners.

Yes, I think that the acceptance of extramarital love correlates with the way people get married. If marriages are usually arranged in your culture and free choice of partner is considered an anomaly, sexual mores in this sense are of course far more rigid than in a permissive society that has practiced for decades marrying people that your parents don't necessarily have to like. Modern mores of not arranging marriages effectively date back to the Industrial Revolution when traditional bondages became weak for the working class people who just fled their villages. They no longer had as much to lose as that their marriages had to serve for keeping family assets in the family by arranging them between two befriended families or such a thing. Hey, isn't that the reason for the widespread hemophilia in European top nobility? So free choice became more and more commonplace as did extramarital sex in these lower classes who had nothing to lose. And a long time after time, the convention of choosing your partner yourself became more usual in higher classes as social mobility progressed.

Love marriages first became that common in the West in the early 20th century. First then, when marriage became a move of self-determination, there was room for the concept that sexuality could be free as well, which indeed needed another push, but that push definitely needed the precondintion that already marriage was free. And for the LBGT people, I think that the concept of free love was vital to the concept that same-sex love is a fully valuable form of love as well. And the concept of same-sex marriage follows this as well, that gays are recognized as not per se promiscuous screwers but as human beings who also have an urge to seriously merge.

That there were once miscegnation laws in the US shows that people even then really would have liked to freely choose their spouses if there wasn't any obstacle avoiding it. So I see hope for the Deep South whose marriages also aren't arranged if you remind that the stereotypical Southern marriage is said to be "marrying your dream guy from high school and asking yourself why you did it the rest of your life".
 

Goldstein

Banned
As aforementioned, the title sounds more like a DBWI and reflects the Amercian origin of the asking person. If sexual mores in Ireland and Poland shall really be more rigid than elsewhere just because abortion is illegal is questionable, though doubtable surveys of popular scientific value quoted in various lifestyle magazines do indeed repeatedly report about the lesser promiscuity of the average Pole compared to e.g. the average German. But people normally have access to normal contraception and normally choose their spouses by themselves, so I don't think you will find an intense difference among Westerners.

I've known a lot of Poles in my university, and for what I've seen and heard, their sexual morals are indeed far more rigid than in Spain, while Italian, French and German students don't make a difference with us in that terms. IMO, the main "problem" (I'm not saying they do wrong) with Polish and Irish people to reach the challenge, is that they take catholicism too seriously, but so did Spain until recently, so that could change in a few decades.
 
the problem is not the attitude people have or the moral issues of individuals, the problem is the official morality, ider of the religious estblishment or of the state, wich is always at least 20 years out of date

most states in what is generally called "west" (and i asume this means all states north-west from Grece to Kanada and south-west from Finland to Mexico, some would count in most of South America, and lately ewen Turkey) have populations wich consider all of the mentioned behaviour completely nomal (ok i dont know about Turkey but im assuming most others do)


these people (hundreds of milions of them), each individually see no problem with premarital sex, or people living together without mariage, or ewen minors having sex, as long as they are old enough not to be considered children (althou people being people they are having sex as young as 13, wich obviously cant be good), and if cultural bias on homosexuality would wind down a little in a generation or two they wouldnt give half a turd about homosexuality ider, considering it normal as any other human behaviour

also there is a general silent aceptance of abortion as a sad but completely normall thing

most of these populations are hipocritical about all this, but that is merely human

the problem is religious authority has a big influence on how certain people vote, pure and simple
no mainstream political party dares risk losing that 10-20% of voters that sadly still identify with the positions and worldwiews of their respective religious denominations, ewen if most of these profesed belivers would be unable to state their main religious belifes, and would end up claiming they belive "something is out there"

its realy not a question of religious belife, faith, or morals of anny kind

its just that respect for religious authority is ingrained in people at a young age, and religious institutions are always politically biased, so their viewpoints are shared ewen by non-religious people of the same political persuasion, almoust alwais reactionary and conservative

that is why so few educational sistems have secular sexual education for instance, instead apsurdities such as church backed sex-education and family planing programs can be seen in manny countries, or idiotic apstinence olnly movements

but as the influence of religious organisations lessens this should resolwe itself in a few generations
ider that or sexual education will be the least of our problems
 
Last edited:
I've known a lot of Poles in my university, and for what I've seen and heard, their sexual morals are indeed far more rigid than in Spain, while Italian, French and German students don't make a difference with us in that terms. IMO, the main "problem" (I'm not saying they do wrong) with Polish and Irish people to reach the challenge, is that they take catholicism too seriously, but so did Spain until recently, so that could change in a few decades.

Not just Poland - even some of the Orthodox countries as well.
 
There are a lot of conservatives in America who think that homosexuality is wrong and should be illegal. Now, without getting too political, that's morally repugnant to me (cannot be overstated enough). Homosexuality hurts no one.

That's just one example of how American culture can be 'backwards' and conservative at the same time; outlawing victimless crimes. Now, you can still be conservative and think that gay sex is wrong in Europe; but the difference is, the government lets its citizens express themselves how they choose. Another example would be cannabis; why is it socially acceptable for college students (assuming they're at least 21; and even if they're underage, the penalties for underage drinking are much lighter than those for marijuana possession) to get incredibly drunk on a regular basis, but if they start smoking weed then it becomes a crime? Is anyone honestly hurt if people choose a drug that, on the whole, is much less harmful than alcohol?

Again, conservatives can still abstain from smoking cannabis. But for the people who want to, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to.

As for the loose sexual morals, just give it a few more years and the whole U.S. will be like the West Coast is now. Hopefully people will get over abstinence only education quickly, once they realize how ineffective it is.

Things are like that in the US simply because they ARE a democracy, and thus far, the majority of the population would prefer it this way. Simple as that. American culture is a more religious culture than European culture is, and thus it naturally prefers to keep close to the tenets of their religious doctrine. Many Americans would consider a "do anything and everything you want" culture like the Netherlands or Sweden has to be amoral and backwards. America's religious culture is one of it's distinguishing traits, and has been developed gradually over four centuries. Remember, the state that today is known as the USA would eventually develop from the pilgrims who settled there in the 17th century. Pilgrims who settled there for RELIGIOUS reasons. Is it any surprise it is religious? It also has a lot of devout Catholics who have immigrated from Central and South America.
 
Last edited:
Top